New scientific research points to a key drawback of organic agriculture, unfortunately: It is typically less efficient and productive than conventional growing methods. That’s a problem for fans of organic because the world has a limited supply of farmland, a billion or so undernourished people, a growing population, an expanding middle class and therefore a vast appetite for affordable and nourishing food. If, in fact, organic methods are less productive, scaling up the production of organic food at will require more land, contribute to deforestation and cost more than growing our food using conventional methods. That suggests that organic methods alone can’t feed the world in a sustainable way. [click to continue…]

Sunday mornings, after my weekly long run, I enjoy visiting the Bethesda Central Farm Market. I’ll buy some organic greens, tomatoes, peaches or whatever’s in season from Bending Bridge Farm or Twin Springs Fruit Farm, enjoy coffee and a danish, maybe see friends or neighbors and look forward to some good, healthy eating. Sure, the food’s pricey, but I feel good that I’m protecting farmworkers from chemical pesticides,supporting local growers (well, sort of local, since Twin Springs is 70 miles away) and — most importantly — helping the environment.

Steve Savage says I’m fooling myself.

Steve is a Stanford-trained biologist with a PhD in plant science from the University of California at Davis. He’s a prominent critic of those who make big claims on behalf of organic agriculture. (See, for example, yesterday’s blogpost, Maria Rodale: Why organic food is the answer) Organic agriculture won’t save the planet, he says. What’s more, and this is important, it won’t feed the planet.

Steve Savage

A couple of things to know about Steve. He’s a consultant for the agriculture industry, as well as for investors, so he’s got a stake in what advocates like to call “modern agriculture,” i.e., pesticides, chemical fertilizers and biotech crops. But he’s by no means a defender of the status quo and, in fact, he’s got his own interesting thoughts about how to make agriculture more sustainable. One problem, he notes, is that so much U.S. farmland is rented, and he suggests restructuring farmland leases to give farmers a long-term stake in building soil quality on the land they rent, about which more below.

But first, organics. Organic agriculture is small–very small, when measured as a percentage of farmland in the U.S. As Steve writes here, despite the oft-repeated claim that organic is the fastest-growing segment of the food industry, only about 2.5 million acres of US cropland were certified as Organic in 2008, the year in which USDA did its most comprehensive survey of organic farmers. That’s 0.7 percent of the 370 million acres of US cropland. At current growth rates, organic will cover less than 3% of U.S. cropland in 2050. So organic food is a niche, plain and simple, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, given the price premium that growers need to keep farming organically.

“I never have any problem with anybody farming, including organic farming,” Steve says, “just as long as people aren’t under the illusion that they’re saving the planet that way.”

“A less than 1% solution after 30 years isn’t a big solution, and we do need a big solution,” he adds.

Of course, organically acreage would grow faster if more people bought organic food. That’s why Maria Rodale wrote her Organic Manifesto. So is that where we need to go as consumers?

No, says Steve, for a couple of reasons. First, organic food as a rule costs more. (See this pro-organic website, and this 2008 New York Times story and this USDA data set for specifics.) In recession-era America, asking mainstream shoppers to pay a premium for their food is asking a lot. “If the economics were more favorable to organic agriculture, you’d see more organic agriculture,” he says. Or, as an NGO exec I know once put it: “Organic food is like private school–nice if you can afford it.” [click to continue…]

Today I’m at the Atlantic Food Summit, a jam-packed gathering of Washington policy-makers, ag experts, consultants, lobbyists, foodies and chefs (Alice Waters! Sam Kass!) who have gathered to talk about sustainable agriculture, feeding the global poor, the obesity crisis, farm subsidies, school lunches and the White House garden.

What I’m struck by is the not just the discussion about what all agree is the big issue — how to feed a global population that will grow to 9 billion by 2050 — but persistent confusion about underlying facts, evidence and science.

Maybe it’s because food is such an emotional topic. Maybe it’s because it’s complicated. Maybe because it’s local, with no one-size-fits-all solution Or maybe it’s because partisans have reason to sow misunderstanding.

Particularly around the issue of genetically-modified organisms, which may–or may not be- the key to driving agricultural productivity, there’s confusion as well as disagreement. It surfaced during a panel on sustainable agriculture that featured, among others, Gary Hirshberg, the ce-YO of Stonyfield Farm, and Nina Federoff, a molecular biologist and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [click to continue…]